Meditation

Read through the instructions below, don’t be scared to open your eyes and check something rather than hope you are doing it right. The answer to the questions; “Am I doing this right?” and “Am I meditating?” is always no.  If you are thinking, you are not meditating.  Meditation is a heart-based process, not an intellectual one.

Trust yourself just a little bit, you can do this. Everyone meditates in their own way, don’t panic, do the best you can right now and surrender to the process.

1. Prepare as you normally would for meditation if you are an experienced meditator. If you haven’t meditated for a while, or ever, use a place you can be undisturbed, maybe light a candle (white would be good for this purpose), light your favourite incense, put on some instrumental music, lyrics will disturb your concentration. Sit comfortably on the floor or on a chair, wear loose clothing or at least loosen belts etc.
2. Take a few slow, deep breaths focussing on relaxing, releasing the thoughts in your head, your mind will start running around a bit, that’s ok, acknowledge the thought, let it go and focus back on your breathing. Meditation is an exercise and like any exercise it takes a bit of practice to “get it right”.
   • An important thing to remember about meditation is that it takes place in the inner planes of your mind, so release your expectations of what is going to happen, release your expectations about what is correct or right and relax into the process.
   • If you try to control the meditation you are not meditating, you are just breathing deeply. Be open to receive, even if what you receive is not what you expect or hope for.
   • If your attention “skips”, that’s ok, take another deep breath and focus again. It will get easier with practice.
3. If you have already done a meditation to create a meditation temple or inner temple etc. you can use it for this process, if you haven’t created an inner temple or something similar, you can imagine your mind and awareness moving down from your head into your heart (PS – apparently your physical heart has brain cells in it too – called the heart brain – more about the heart space in the article on (0) or the blank page).
4. Again, let the point spark into being and drawing a horizontal line, until it stops, changes direction a bit and draws another line the same length. It repeats this process a few more times until it comes back to where it started, creating the perfect hexagon.
5. Let the energy of the hexagon flow, how do you feel? Allow your feelings and thoughts to flow.
6. As you look at it, the points at the top and bottom send out lines to the two points on the opposite side and connect a line creating two equilateral triangles. Look at the image and let the energy speak to you, what do you feel?
7. Let the hexagon fade and the hexagram brighten.
8. Watch as the two triangles move apart, the one pointing upward turning to flame, and the one pointing downward into water.  Feel their individual essences, then watch them move back together again, balancing each other out, what do you notice about the centre?
9. Just watch and listen and let the thoughts flow
10. When you feel you have absorbed everything you can for the moment, focus again on your breathing, you may feel disconnected from your body, that’s ok, take some more breathes focussing on balancing your mind with your body, rub your fingers and thumb on both hands together until you feel centred, calm and grounded.
11. Take a massive breath in, blow yourself up like a balloon, then exhale in a rush allowing all the air to rush out of your lungs, then breathe normally and when you feel ready open your eyes.
12. Remember to make notes in your journal/mediation journal.